Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Crochet Architecture

Structure and pleasure derives from the the right stitch meeting the right fiber using a comfortable implement that allows you to twist and manipulate the fiber with far more ease than your fingers lone could. So you create a structure a fabric, an object that began as a straight line with which you drew.

This drawing made the singular multiply and made the line dense and multidirectional.

I stand in awe of the ancestors whose genius though to spin filaments into thread, to gather animal and plant fibers and ply them together, and then from that, knot and weave and then pattern these knottings and weavings into ever more complex designs.

This doing is a healing. This making is a healing. A way to breathe and calm. A flow into which to go this exploration is a comfort and a glory, an itch and a hunger. A restlessness and roaming with many arrivals.

My latest design foray had me up late and discomfited as I sought a solution. Having found it, I knew joy and then I reinterrogated the solution, found I was less complacently fulfilled than I though, but not as anxious for an answer as when I began.

I find I must look at things again and again and again as I am still building my vocabulary of stitch forms and how to accomplish them. My practice is reading patterns and then envisioiong the form that is described... like sight singing.

Some patterns like some computer code are just wasteful. I can sometimes dsicenr that there is an easier way to achieve theireffect or even that a small ealboration, night yield an even grander effect. As this latest return to the crochet path is only a few months old, these insights are headier than they migt be had I been steady processing, reading and making.

I am grateful for fiber whioch enabled me to make handsome bracelets, pins and other accessories for some of the manywho have supported me in this challenging time.At All Crafts for Charity, I met women across the country who are churning out handmade joy to gift the less fortunate.As I am now among the less fortunate, it is a balm to me to find a way to yet help some others as others help me.And so, to prarphrase Charlotte of Cahrlotte's Web (heard discussed today on the Diane Rheim (sp?) show " to lift another a little" and so lift myself.

I am gratified that I was able to turn the gift of yarn into hats and booties for poor preemies.

This blog will record my fiber exploration and fiber contemplation as I work with the tools I am able to use: hooks and yarnand try to construct a way onward, a bridge, some wings, a habitable place, a vessel, an airship.